Grahame Walker

Welcome to the first of four Sundays, where we will study the Book of Jonah together. Interestingly Jonah does not carry prophetic Oracles or sayings as we find in other prophetic books. It’s a narrative that brings the word of God to bear on a human life. To proclaim the will of God in a particular set of circumstances. It has to do with summoning, announcing and calling. Most of the time prophets were the bearers of warning and judgement. In Jonah we see God, one on one dealing with a human being and through Jonah we get insight into God’s dealings with us. We also gain a glimpse of the heart of God for all people. One more bit of introduction before we jump into the first section. There is lots of debate over whether Jonah should be considered a historical account, of an actual human being in the events of his life. The reason it’s been such a matter of debate is because of an incident with a relatively large fish. We are going to treat all the book of Jonah as history. Even the story of the whale. Everything about Jonah was written as history. We will deal with this in more detail next week.